Troubleshooting Injection Molding Warpage with SOLIDWORKS Plastics

What is Injection Molding Warpage Warpage? The occurrence of shape change of the injection molded part after it has been ejected from the mold cavity is called warpage. A warp part will have twist and bends resultant due to internal stresses subjected on the part due to uneven shrinkage rate and mechanical forces like the ejection process.

Causes 

•     Incorrect processing parameters
•     Mold Issue
•     Injection molding machine issue
•     Part design issue
•     Poor plastic material selection

Solution

Using SOLIDWORKS Plastics software for injection molding analysis, designers and engineers can detect issues such as warpage before molds are created, avoiding costly mold rework and achieve huge cost savings.

SOLIDWORKS Plastics warpage detection tool

Incorrect processing parameters

Processing parameters such as injection rate, cooling time and  melt temperature can be tweaked using SOLIDWORKS Plastics. The figure below depicts multiple process parameters available for designer or the engineer to view after the simulation process.

Simulation Post Processing Results

Mold Issue

Uneven cooling, ejection, wrong gate location, gate too small are some of the causes that need to be rectified. Using Plastics simulation post processing results plots can be viewed which helps the user to determine the correct parameters for the injection process. Also SOLIDWORKS Plastic offers the user to perform multiple what if scenarios such as changing injection location anywhere in the mold cavity to get the best result.

Material Injection Location Setup Tool

Part Design Issue

Using SOLIDWORKS Plastics, the user can determine the issues with the part design and geometry. Since Plastics is nicely integrated into the SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD package, users can perform design changes such as length, height, width dimensions as well as thickness and also removing and adding material wherever required by just switching tabs. This easy of use eliminates cumbersome tasks such as importing files into different simulation and analysis packages saving huge amounts of time and costs.

Poor Plastic Material Selection

As mentioned above, multiple what if scenarios can be used in SOLIDWORKS Plastics for simulation. This includes simulating the injection mold filling process from a wide selection of materials. SOLIDWORKS Plastics offers over 4000 + grades of materials for simulation purposes.

Material Selection Library

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS Plastics

Raise the quality of your products, and reduce costs for physical prototypes and testing by easily subjecting your designs to real world conditions using SOLIDWORKS Plastics.